Saudi Aramco's Shaybah field is on-stream

Aug. 26, 1998 Vice President of Saudi Aramco for Project Management Abdulrahman Al-Wuhaib reported that production and pipeline shipments of Arabian extra light crude oil from the Shaybah field started early last month. He attributed the success of the Shaybah project, which has a production target of 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day, to the combined efforts of employees, contractors and suppliers, adding that project completion time was cut by 25 % following the preliminary engineering work.
The Shaybah project was a global effort and involved contractors from Saudi Arabia, the United States, Argentina, United Kingdom, France and Greece. It includes a central gas-oil separate plant with 2 satellites, 140 oil production and gas and water injection wells, and hundreds of miles of pipeline, including one connecting the field to the processing facilities 400 miles away in Abqaiq, where Shaybah crude is stabilised and blended with crude from other fields for export. The project also includes an airstripand terminal, an access road, a fibre-optic cable communications link with Abqaiq, and facilities for 750 full-time residents. The Shaybah oilfield lies 500 miles south-east of Dhahran in the Rub-al-Khali desert and is more than 300 miles from the nearest town.